


Tellan the Red & the Crew of the P.S. Normandy "or BUST"

by ARandomFactoid



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Let's put on a show, Pirates, Renaissance Faires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 18:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1867212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ARandomFactoid/pseuds/ARandomFactoid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Renn Fair/Shenko AU request by Delazeur on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tellan the Red & the Crew of the P.S. Normandy "or BUST"

The first time, Shepard stood outside of the Renaissance Festival gates, grumpy and self-conscious in the borrowed ground length skirt and corseted bodice borrowed from her best friend’s little sister. 

“At least you’re wearing sneakers under that skirt.” Williams consoled her as she helped Shepard cover her bare shoulders in sunscreen. “Abbey found my old horse riding boots when she was getting all this together for us. Did I tell you I was horrible at horseback riding? These aren’t even broken in… HUGE blisters in my future.”

With a final pat and a slight push towards the gate Ashley asked, “Ready?”

Hitching up her skirt with both hands, Shepard gave her best ‘Let’s do the thing, Ash.’ face and said “Less than two weeks ago we were in Kandahar - this is going to be cake.”

At the end of the day, Shepard is sunburnt, Ashley has blisters that have their own blisters, and both are sticky from the ‘Ginormous Queenly candied apples’ they had for dinner. They are also so tired they almost forget to pick up the swords the bought earlier in the afternoon on their way out of the gate.

The second time, Ashley has classes and Shepard is at loose ends while she waits for her in-state residency to be granted, so she tags along with Abbey and her friends. It’s a spur of of the moment middle of the week thing, so she’s in street clothes. She leaves a pirate, complete with a pricey artisan-made tri-corner hat she bought from a shop run by a chatty couple with mis-matched Scottish and Midwestern accents.

The third time, that weekend, she meets Garry. He introduces himself by calling her captain and complimenting her costume, which is something considering he’s wearing a full Roman centurion battle-dress. He explains he is the de-facto leader of the informal club of vets that meet up and geek-out at the fair, and he and Abbey have a mutual friend that pointed her out. They talk for an hour, leaning up against a wooden fence, stopping frequently when they’re approached for pictures or asked questions about their costumes or the fair. 

She doesn’t even realize the scars covering the side of his face are real until a grade-schooler asks if he got them fighting with the real Roman army.

Ashley texts her a picture of the two of them leaning up against the fence - she’s in class and Abbey had snapped it and sent it along. Cute. Is he single? If so, dibs, the accompanying message read. Shepard laughs and so she feels obliged to show Garry the pic and the text. He looks it over before handing the phone back. “Abbey’s sister, right?” he asks. “Bring her along if you decide to come to one of our get togethers.” he adds as he hands her a card with the phone numbers of several of his group. “You already have friends if you’re looking for, or need one.”

She adds the numbers to her phone, and buys a season pass on the way out.

By the end of the season she’s known around the fairgrounds as Tellan the Red, a reference to her hair and the bright red sash tied around her waist - it’s the first time she’s been referred to by her first name in years. They attend closing gala as a full pirate crew: Tellan, Ashley and Garry - along with Jacob, Ricky, Chuck, Bethany, Jeff, Steve, Jimmy, Edi, and Sam; getting in on the group ticket price deal. And somewhere between her third pint and fourth rendition of ‘Drunken Sailor’ she’s approached by one the fair’s organizers, David, who has a proposition.

“We’ve been thinking about adding a pirate ship stage for the last couple of years. You and your friends have been making quite the impression. You’re quite well known for someone who actually doesn’t work here. We, the organizing committee, were hoping you and your friends would consider auditioning to be our crew.”

“I’m not… I don’t know how to perform for people. I was a soldier, I’m a college student.” she stammers, not really answering the non-question.

David smiles and pats her on the shoulder. “Tellan the Red, we’ve been getting comment cards and emails about our visitor’s favorite part of the fair being the pirate crew, many mentioning you by name. Just think about it.”

“What did Duke Dave want?” Jimmy asks when she sits back down with the group.

She thinks for a moment before the smiles, and rubbing her hands together announces: 

“Crew, I think I have us a line on a ship.”  
\---------

The winter and spring are a blur of classes and rehearsals for Shepard. The auditions are mostly a formality and establish that they need professional help, especially when it comes to figuring out how to put on a show. It almost falls apart several times over, including the time Jacob, their fencing expert (as in he had, at one time, fenced), tried to back out entirely - citing the new baby at home. It’s his wife, Bryn, who saves them by making him show up at rehearsal, calling Garry herself and demanded the guy get out of the house for something other than work and diaper runs. 

Shepard changes her spring schedule around to take theatre and fencing classes. When she answers honestly about what she hopes to get out ot the class she picks up Kasumi, who’s really into costumes, and her fencing professor, and old English soldier who goes by Zaeed joins up and another few pieces fall into place. 

One afternoon Jimmy shows up with a heavily tattooed woman riding his shoulders, “My tattoo artist.” he announces, making no move to let her down. “She can flip me over her head and toss me like she’s just doin’ it with her mind. Cool right?”

“I got a name, dumb-ass.” she chides him, kicking his ribs with the heel of her boot. “Call me Jack.” she introduces herself. 

“JimmyJack the Tattoo Twins.” Garry muses “I like it. What do you think, Shepherd?”

When the summer starts in earnest, Shepard switches to online classes and carpools with Samara and Wrex, the senior King’s Guardsmen, to the fairgrounds where they have finally started building the stage. When the high schools let out, Wrex starts bringing along his nephew, dubbed Grunt, to help with the building. He’s big and loud and totally unafraid of making a spectacle of himself. He joins the ‘crew’ as their crier as the construction winds down and they begin to prepare for proper rehearsals.

Then finally, finally, they’re only one week out from opening weekend - and Garry texts her that they’re holding an emergency meeting at ‘The Ship.’ She’s the last to arrive and everyone seems to to be waiting for her when she jogs up to the site that still smells like sawdust and upturned dirt. “What’s up?” she asks, scanning the crowd. “And… where’s Donnell?”

“It seems the captain has abandoned ship.” Garry tells her.

“Loser got an offer to play Captain Hook for Peter Pan dinner theater.” Ashley scoffed, crossing her arms as she kicked a stone at her feet. “Traitor.”

“Right, right…” Shepard stalls, trying to think. “We can get ahold of David and…”

“Already taken care of Shep.” Kasumi interrupts her as she adjusts a massive feathered hat on her head.

“Yeah,” Jimmy continues. “Zaeed here was telling us about how pirates… ouch!”

“Congratulations - you’re the new captain.” Jack finishes for Jimmy. “Now can we get to rehearsing? I gotta try flipping Jimmy into one of the pools. Looks fun.”

The crew starts to break off into the usual groups, Zaeed and Jacob polishing the sword-fights, Jeff and Edi working on the comedy bits, the usual, as Shepard stands there processing Jack’s announcement. 

“We just decided you would make a better Captain than another sell-sword brought in by management The election was unanimous.” Garry explains after most of the crew had dispersed.

“Donnel was an ass, anyway. Always acted like he wasn’t appreciated enough because he was getting paid to be here.” Ashley added. “Didn’t like any of us much, either.”

“Besides,” Garry continued, “Like this hasn’t been your ship, your crew. David approached you, after all. Come’on Captain Shepard, let’s go be pirates.”  
\-------------------------

And so it came to pass, in the old-timey sense, Captain Tellan the Red and the crew of the P.S. Normandy ‘or BUST’ became part and parcel of the annual Renaissance Fair, four shows six days a week not including the raid on the Old King Timothy’s procession on Thursdays and Saturdays (all to steal a kiss from the Princess Miranda - a privilege ceded to her girlfriend, Kasumi) and the Sunday show of getting revenge for their ‘Good Kind Benefactor’ Thane who is killed by a king’s assassin the day before.

Shepard’s favorite part of each show is the audience participation. As ‘Captain’ she gets to choose who she pulls from the audience to take part in their shenanigans - her favorite so far is the girl in the blue fairy get-up who actually asked to get dumped into the pool as Shepard was prepping her for what they were about to do. She’d just nodded enthusiastically when Shepard reminded her of her costume. “I know,” she assured Shepard, “But I want to audition when I’m old enough next season, and this would be an ideal experience to mention on my application.” Shepard hadn’t even minded that Liara’s hug after the show left her blue from shoulder to knees too.

Today, she didn’t notice her ‘victim’ at first, but the girl with her purple hoodie pulled up in the summer heat, definitely too old for whatever she was drinking in her children’s souvenir cup with crazy straw to be apple juice sitting next to him. The guy is tall, dark, and handsome in a CANSOFCOM t-shirt with posture that just screams military. When she asks for a volunteer her eyes scan for purple hoodie and she’s tilting her head towards her military guy, so why not? He acquiesces easy enough despite not having actually volunteered, doesn’t even need a hand up onto the ship. He stumbles a bit over his own name, forgetting he’s off duty and letting ‘Alenko’ slip before he corrects himself with ‘Kaidan.’

“So, Kaidan Alenko,” she starts when she has him ‘below deck’ while Jeff and Edi do their thing for the crowd. “Ready to give your girlfriend a show?”

Kaidan furrows his eyebrows, “Girlfriend?” he asks. “You mean Tali? My cousin?” he continues, tilting his in purple hoodie’s general direction.

“Ummm, yeah…” Shepard answers. “Sorry, then. She seemed bored, and she volunteered you… yeah.”

“Just for the record… not that there is one.” Kaidan smiles at her. “Tali’s date-friend is sitting behind her, wearing one of your group’s t-shirts, with the head-mounted camera.”

“That kid?” Shepard can’t help but ask.

“Yeah.” Kaidan confirms. “Goes by Legion. It’s actually a band name, I think. But, I’m here for public humiliation, right?”

“Right.” She nods. “Can you…?”

It turns out Canadian and US forces know a lot of the same tricks - Kaidan handles Ricky pretty convincingly, flipping him over in a somersault that almost gives their on-call paramedic, Karin, a heart attack. When Garry suggest sending him out of the rope swing, he makes it all the way across to the other side of the ship without incident. He even handles Jeff and Edi’s ribbing with aplomb. Garry sidles up to Shepard while Kasumi and Ash have Kaidan in their clutches, making him ridiculous with costumery and props, “Looks like you want to keep this one, Captain.”

“That’d work out swell”, she says, keeping her voice low, “Me and a Canadian Spec Ops officer visiting family on leave.”

“But you have thought about it.” Garry teases as he steps away and announces. “WELL THERE’S NOTHING FOR IT! WELL JUST HAVE TO SEND THE SQUID OFF THE PLANK!”

“Right, Captain?” He adds for Shepard’s benefit, gesturing with his arms for her to take the honor of pitching Kaidan overboard.

“AYE! WHAT ELSE TO DO WITH A LOYAL SUBJECT OF THE QUEEN?” she shouts as she links an arm in Kaidan’s “Ready to fall, squid?”

Kaidan shrugs and answers. “On your order, Captain.” 

After nearly a hundred shows, weeks of performances, Shepard trips when she’s at the edge of the ship - only saved from soaking wet humiliation by Kaidan, whose reflexes jerked his arm from hers to wrap around her waist, holding her up just at the edge, their weight precariously balanced over the water below as he holds onto the ship with his free hand.

“It seems if I go, you go.” he grinned at her. “Unless your crew comes to save you.”

“If my crew has to fish us out, you’re likely to be shanghaied, squid.” she smiles back, adjusting her arms around his middle.

“Understood, Captain.” he agrees as he lets go of the railing.

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya - Renaissance Fair workers are some of the best people out there! They work really hard in a competitive and under-appreciated field. This is just a bit of fantasy and I'm not trying to depict the reality of the job in any way what-so-ever. That said - please show your appreciation for real-life Fair workers by respecting their work, and leaving a few dollars in the hat/basket/ wash bin after the show!


End file.
